MMA Personalities News - Page 98

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Jeremy Jackson, who appeared on season four of "The Ultimate Fighter," was arrested late last month and charged with seven felony offenses, including two counts of forcible rape.
The 26-year-old Jackson was apprehended on June 30 in Oxnard, Calif., and is being held in a Ventura County jail, with bail set at $1 million.
Officials with the Ventura County Sheriff's Department confirmed the arrest and charges with MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). Events surrounding the arrest were not made available.
In addition to the two counts of forcible rape, Jackson was charged with kidnapping to commit another crime, first-degree residential burglary, assault with a firearm, dissuading a witness by force or threat, and criminal threats. At his initial arraignment, three additional charges -- all felonies -- were levied against Jackson, which included two counts of sexual assault and one count of sex crimes (aggravated circumstances).
Jackson is due in Ventura County Superior Court again Wednesday, at which time he is expected to enter pleas to the charges.
Jackson's appearance on the fourth season of "TUF" was short-lived. UFC President Dana White kicked him off the reality show after he violated rules by leaving the fighter house to meet a woman.
He was invited back to fight on the season finale and suffered a neck injury in a submission loss to Pete Spratt.
Since that fight in November of 2006, Jackson (9-5) has fought just once, winning a Total Combat match in March of last year.

Despite a recent report of a possible September bout, legendary boxing trainer Freddie Roach says his new pupil, MMA superstar Andrei Arlovski (12-5), has not yet finalized plans for a professional boxing debut.
Roach and Arlovski each addressed the media in a conference call today promoting Arlovski's bout with fellow heavyweight Ben Rothwell at "Affliction: Banned," which takes place July 19 at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif.
"I've been training Andrei for boxing, yes," Roach said. "I know he has a future in boxing, of course. But I don't believe there's anything set out there."

Don't be surprised if Tito Ortiz's last fight is with the UFC. Sources close to the situation have informed us that despite being courted by several other organizations, Ortiz apparently prefers to finish his career with the organization he started it with and is currently considering possible fight offers from the UFC. Although no contract agreement has been reached, Ortiz has been in negotiations and was offered potential fights with UFC light heavyweights Houston Alexander, Thierry Sokoudjou and Stephan Bonnar to name a few.
As evidenced by the standing ovation he received from the crowd in attendance during his unanimous decision loss to Lyoto Machida, Ortiz is still a big draw amongst fans. The overwhelming support he received could be one of the reasons why Ortiz, who's grown accustomed to his superstar status and fighting in front of 10,000+ fans, would prefer to stay with the UFC, undeniably the biggest and most popular MMA organization in the world.
Another reason could be that despite going winless in his last three fights, Ortiz is still only one or two fights away from a title shot. Ironically, he holds a controversial split-decision win over newly crowned UFC light heavyweight champion Forrest Griffin and he also has a draw with Rashad Evans, who will be facing Chuck Liddell later this year at UFC 88 to determine the next challenger for the UFC light heavyweight title.

Fedor Emelianenko will finally reveal the legendary fighting and training techniques that have allowed him to become the most revered mixed martial artist of his time. Emelianenko, who is widely considered the greatest pound for pound fighter in the world and has also been referred to as the greatest mixed martial artist of all time, is preparing for perhaps his biggest challenge when he takes on Tim Sylvia on July 19 at Affliction: Banned.
His book of fighting and training techniques entitled; Fedor: The Fighting System of the World's Undisputed King of MMA, will be available in bookstores across the country by August 15.
The book is being brought to you by essentially same team that headed up excellent instructional books from Randy Couture, BJ Penn, Karo Parisyan, and Eddie Bravo.
Fightline.com was able to secure an advance copy of the book and we can assure fans that it will not disappoint. Aside from an insightful and brief biography the book is all instruction, intricately spelled out and easy to understand. The techniques are masterfully broken down and explained in great detail and Emelianenko himself assures that all have been battle tested.
Below is an official description of the book:
In Fedor, the undefeated, undisputed heavyweight MMA champion of the world unveils for the first time his trademark striking and grappling techniques through descriptive narrative and more than 2500 step-by-step color photographs. Detailing dozens of throws, punching combinations, cardio workouts and ground and pound techniques, this book leaves no stone unturned.

Although Quinton Jackson lost his UFC light heavyweight title Saturday to Forrest Griffin in a grueling 25-minute bout, his camp is ready to keep fighting.
Jackson's coach, Juanito Ibarra, plans to protest the unanimous decision with the Nevada State Athletic Commission.
"We got robbed," Ibarra told Sherdog.com Sunday afternoon. "We won the majority of the fight."
Judges Adalaide Byrd and Nelson Hamilton scored the bout 48-46 for Griffin, while Roy Silbert turned in a 49-46 tally for Griffin.
It's extremely unlikely that a protest would change the outcome of the fight. Ibarra isn't hopeful in that regard, but less than 24 hours after his fighter had lost in the UFC for the first time, the coach seemed determined to learn exactly how the fight was scored.
He was baffled that Byrd and Silbert gave Griffin a 10-9 advantage in the first round, during which Jackson dropped the challenger. In Ibarra's view, the knockdown warranted a 10-8 round in Jackson's favor. He believes Jackson won the third and fourth rounds on 10-9 scores, though he said Griffin deserved a 10-8 second round and a 10-9 fifth. That comes out to a 47-46 win for Jackson.
"You have to beat the champion," Ibarra asserted more than once.
Randy Couture, a coach and training partner of Griffin, gave a slight edge to the new champion.
"I thought that it was a very, very close fight," Couture said. "I thought that it was three rounds to two [for Griffin]. I thought that Quinton did enough to win two of the rounds clearly. I thought they may have been able to give Quinton a 10-8 round in the first round with the knockdown and then the second round you could have given Forrest a 10-8 round.
"And it could have went the other way. If one or two rounds went the other way, it could have been three rounds to two for Quinton. It was that close."

Nothing gets boring faster than perfection, except for perhaps mediocrity. In the realm of fight sport, the sight of an athlete slipping from one into the other is often the fuel for the theater of the unexpected that MMA has become.
While seeing our favorites cast aside after one beating too many is all too common an occurrence, we do occasionally get to see the most moribund of fighters get in touch with their inner "Cinderella Man."
With both James Braddock and a certain "TUF" product in mind, we cast our sights on chronicling the five greatest career turnarounds this young sport has ever seen. So load up for a trip down memory lane and don't forget the Kleenex -- this place is gonna be Niagara Falls in a bit.

A quote from Crocop from his website at MMA-ID.com
"Hello everyone,
unfortunately I have some bad news? I won't be fighting at DREAM 5 at all. I was about to face Jerome LeBanner but he decided to fight in K1 against Schilt. Mighty Mo was the alternative and I accepted this challenge, but unfortunately Mighty Mo pulled off from the fight. I was ready to face Mo, but maybe this scenario wasn't that bad for me at all and I'll tell you why.
I've been having problems with my right elbow for years and the injury got even worse over last 6 months. I'm already receiving a proper treatment but the recovery won't happen over night. The second problem is a knee injury, something that troubles me for quite a while. I had difficulties using my kicks and over last few weeks I focused more on boxing and grappling. I really wanted to fight on July 21 and I was even ignoring doctor's suggestions, but now I've rached the point from which I can't continue with my normal training regiment due to my injuries.
I was willing to accept the risk of fighting Mo or someone else without being 100% ready fo the fight. I had only one fight this year, I miss big fights and top level competition. I'm eager to get back to the big stage, I still have good fights left in me and I won't give up. I'm not happy with this outcome of course, but at this moment I need to be patient and give some time for my body to recover.
I'm scheduled for arthroscopy tomorrow morning, it's a minor surgical procedure but it will keep me away from MMA trainings for 2-3 weeks probably. From Wednesday I'll focus on my new cardio training program and we'll add MMA elements to my training regiment as soon as my knee will be ready for action.
My goal is to become the first heavyweight champion in DREAM and to do that I need to be ready to fight on September 23. I'm not interested in summer time, vacations or things like that; I'll focus on getting back to shape and hopefully I'll fight in September. I would really like to fight Alistair Overeem, we all know why and I won't let it go. My career is far from being over, I'll be fighting some strong competitors soon again and hopefully I'll meet Fedor in the ring once more in 2009.
Thank you for supporting me and I'll get back to you all soon to keep you updated. "

Just as some began to sense Quinton "Rampage" Jackson was on the downside of his career, Juanito Ibarra saw a man with untapped potential. When other mixed martial artists considered Jackson nothing more than a brawler, Ibarra was convinced he could supply him with an arsenal of self-defense tactics...........
"What I seen in Quinton was just a lot of raw ability and a bad attitude," Ibarra remembers.
"I always said, if this kid can really learn how to be a professional, act like a professional, build a brand and have somebody teach him how to fight . . . he'd be a champion."

Former MMA referee "Big" John McCarthy may have retired from working in the UFC Octagon but he will be a color commentator for the July 19th "Affliction Banned" pay-per-view event, featuring the WAMMA heavyweight championship fight between the most lethal MMA heavyweight of all-time, Russian M1 superstar legend Fedor "The Last Emperor" Emelianenko (27-1), and former UFC heavyweight champion Tim "The Maine-iac" Sylvia (24-4), live from Honda Center in Anaheim, California.

Daniel Herbertson was on location in Tokyo to witness the second day of K-1 Max and Dream's Akasaka Fight Festival, where Shinya Aoki (Pictures) and Masakazu Imanari (Pictures) took to the mat for a grappling exhibition.
Also, Tatsuya Kawajiri (Pictures) and Hidehiko Hasegawa (Pictures) displayed some excellent technique.

Thomas Denny has no problems walking into the lion's den.
The former King of the Cage champion has agreed to face resident troublemaker Nick Diaz in his hometown of Stockton, Calif. on EliteXC's second CBS-televised card at the Stockton Arena on July 26. Contracts are expected to be inked Tuesday.
The 160-pound bout joins a previously announced matchup between the much-vaunted Jake Shields and former Bodog Fight champion Nick Thompson for the vacant EliteXC welterweight crown.
A self-promoting crowd-pleaser, the "Wildman" has waged over 40 battles in the cage since 1999, including key victories over Tony Fryklund and Olaf Alonso.
Denny's three-fight deal with the Pro Elite promotion kicked off against the single-named muay Thai striker Malaipet on a ShoXC "Elite Challenger Series" card last March. Malaipet was disqualified for elbowing Denny to the back of the head at the conclusion of the first round.
Denny and Diaz had been slated to meet in other organizations on two different occasions.

Anyone insistent that mixed martial arts has more in common with boxing than professional wrestling should learn their alphabet: UFC, IFL, WAMMA, etc.
Like the televised clown convention that is the WWE, the UFC has a stable of athletes unavailable for lending -- kind of like those musty reference books at the library.
That stands in sharp contrast to boxing's business model, which tends to acquiesce to fans' demands. Lennox Lewis was an HBO commodity. Mike Tyson was on Showtime's leash. Yet, the two networks understood that remaining contentious was just leaving money on the table.
With $106 million in the till, the Lewis-Tyson fight was the second most profitable pay-per-view of all time.
MMA's current problem is that no one -- fans, media or otherwise -- are demanding promoters to make important bouts before age and ring wear make them obsolete.
What follows is a list of fighters from disparate promotions that should swap leather before it's too late.

It's hard to believe more than three years have past since Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar lit up televisions across America during the finale of the inaugural season of The Ultimate Fighter.
On Saturday, the Spike TV reality show completes yet another season -- its seventh -- in a world where mixed martial arts has become a fairly regular installment on television.
Of course, roughly three-and-a-half years ago, that wasn't the case. Few realized it, but the gimmicky show on a network no one had ever heard of was MMA's chance -- maybe even its last chance -- to make it big. While mounting debt put Zuffa, the parent company of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, in a perilous spot, co-owners Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta cobbled together $10 million to pay for one season of the show.
It wasn't some great discovery. Everyone around the sport rightly believed that exposure in large doses of an underappreciated sport was the only way to get MMA off life support and on the path of progression. The problem resided in getting a deal done. Networks weren't interested in taking a risk on something they hadn't a clue about, especially when the targeted audience was unclear.
Thanks to The Ultimate Fighter, we now know that young men take to MMA.
The show's concept was new, or at least the MMA spin was unforseen. There wasn't a template, and everyone seemed to be winging it -- from the fighters to the promoters, and even the producers. Whether it was genius casting or a moment of serendipity, the first group of fighters was special. Not only could most of the guys prove themselves in the cage, but they were also boiling over with personality. From the pranks of Chris Leben and Dana White's infamous "Do you want to be a [deleted expletive] fighter?" speech, to, perhaps, the best battle in T.U.F. history between Griffin and Bonnar, no season has yet to compare...

May 4 became a very important day for Fedor as he finished his study as a student of chair of physical training at Belgorod State University. It’s understandable that Fedor’s schedule wouldn’t let him graduate as quickly as other students normally do. The topic of his thesis was “Methodology of physical skills development training 13-15 year old sambo practitioners”. Of course he was in the grip of slight emotion but years of hard training regimen helped him keep his composure while answering the questions with a smile. The topic was chosen intentionally since Fedor himself tried and proved all the methods he offered during his graduate work. By the way, the Fedor Emelianenko’s Sports Academy which is being built in Belgorod will soon test Fedor’s strategies of bringing up the best athletes.

Anderson Silva is about to make the jump.
The UFC middleweight champion has accepted an invitation to move up to the light heavyweight division for a bout with James Irvin at an impromptu UFC event July 19 in Las Vegas. Heavyweight prospect Brandon Vera has also agreed to make a move in the opposite direction -- he'll face former International Fight League rep Reese Andy in a co-featured bout at 205 pounds, multiple sources have confirmed to Sherdog.com.
The event, which is being assembled on five weeks' notice, will air live on Spike TV the same night that Affliction Entertainment hosts its first pay-per-view card, "Banned," at the Honda Center in Anaheim, Calif.

I will get to the very few highlights of the book but believe me when I say there weren't many. If half the shit he talked about is true I certainly commend him for picking himself up and making a life for himself. While I have always enjoyed Ortiz's antics and for the most part his fights, I have lost a measure of respect for him as a person.
The book starts out talking about his early childhood, his mother and father were big time potheads. There's a picture of them sitting at a table cutting up marijuana plants. Tito grew up with two older half brothers. This is where his first outrageous claim starts. He says that he was smoking pot and drinking by the time he was 5, I don't know about you but I find that a little ridiculous. If it's true then his older brothers are the biggest dirtbags in the world. He was never a good student because for the most part he skipped a lot of school and was into getting in trouble. Nothing major but petty theft and the like. His parents never tried to hide their drug use and were very open about it. His father was injured at work and was on morphine to dull the pain, when that was no longer working his mom and dad were introduced to Heroin. Their habit was bad and it forced the family to move from place to place, live in motels, people's garages and trailers. Tito had no direction and was getting high and joined a gang.
This behavior continued throughout middle school and it wasn't until early on in High School Tito met a friend named Eric Escobdo who was on the wrestling team, this is where Tito's life began to turn for the better. He kept clean for the most part while wrestling but after the season ended it was right back to the drugs. He did everything but Heroin, he said he would never do that because of what it did to his parents. He was pretty succesful in wrestling right from the start and he really enjoyed it. He met his future wife Kristin while a sophmore and it was just a friendship then it wouldn't turn into love until awhile later. Tito went to jail during the summer of his sophmore year for stealing a car. This was one of many times he had run ins with the law, but as I said they were never anything major. He was very close to going to jail for a long time and he has wrestling to thank for not being involved. His friend Nacho begged him to go on a run with him to do some work for a guy, well he didn;t go because pf practice and his friend was arrested with a million dollars worth of speed, guns and bulletproof vests, his friend got 25 to life.
After high school his mom who was now remarried told him his stepfather wanted him out so he moved in with his stepbrother and his girlfriend. He got a job at a moving company and was miserable. He was still getting high and being a degenerate. He started dealing meth and other drugs and one night at a party he reconnected with Kristin, they started to hang out and that's how they began their love story. Then by chance he was at a bar and ran into an old wrestling coach. He helped Tito get financial aid, hooked him up with the wrestling coach and he was off to Golden West College. Tito started school in 1995 and was a physical education major, he said he would have loved to have been a teacher because he wanted to help kids avoid the pitfalls that life can throw at you. Kristin also attended the same school with him. In his first year he won the state title and led the state with the most pins. It was around this time when he became hooked on watching The UFC. One day while watching an event he recognized a guy he had defeated while in high school, his name was Jerry Bohlander and Tito was amazed.
After the wrestling season ended he was introduced to Tank Abbott who was looking for someone to help him train, so Tito went and trained with Tank for a few weeks. Tank taught how to work the crowd and make yourself a commodity. Tito went back to school and repeated as state champion in 1996. In March of 1997 Tank called Tito asking him if he was interested in fighting on an UFC card. He fought as an amateur so he wouldn't lose his student status. He trained for 6 months with Tank to get ready for his fight. To my surprise his first fight in MMA was not with the UFC, it was to fight in a gym against a BJJ guy, he wanted to test himself. That fight went to a draw.
His first UFC fight was May 30th, 1997 at UFC 13. He fought Wes Albritton a 5th degree black belt in karate. The fight lasted 22 seconds, they clinched Tito took him down and mounted him and nailed him with punches. To his surpise he fought again that night against Guy Mezger. Tito tapped out to a rear naked choke after some back and forth action. After that people started recognizing him and his life would never be the same. He then attended Bakersfield college and it was there that he started another life long problem, cheating on Kristin. With her back in Huntington Beach it was easy. This is also where his relationship with Tank went awry. Tito got into trouble, Tank promised him help and never delivered. He also had problems with the wrestling coach at Bakersfield, they didn't get along at all. He quit school after the season and went back to Huntington Beach and got a job at Spanky's Adult Novelty Store. He had a manager by the name of Saul Garcia who was trying to get him a fight with the UFC but Tank stabbed Tito in the back and said he would never fight for the UFC again if they hired Tito. He took a fight in a warehouse against a guy named Eugen Jackson a veteran of Extreme Fighting Championships. That fight ended up a draw as well.
Tito was fed up and him and his manager went down to Brazil to go see a UFC official named John Peretti, this trip was sponsored and paid for by the owner of Spanky's. After some needling Peretti called Tito and offered him a fight with his old high school opponent Jerry Bohlander. This took place on January 8, 1999 at UFC 18. Tito won by TKO at 14:31. Right before the fight he was approached by a porn production company and they paid him a couple grand to wear a t-shirt htat said I Just ****** Your Ass. This is where the t-shirt thing started. His next fight was on March 5, 1999 at UFC 19 against Guy Mezger once again. He beat him the whole fight and it was stopped at 13:00. That;s when he pulled out the Gay Mezger Is My Bitch shirt and this is where the war with Ken Shamrock started as Tito flipped of Mezger's crew.

Devin Duane Cole, 31, of the 500 block of Pearl Street, Medford. Medford police Saturday arrested Cole on charges of first-degree rape, two counts of first-degree sodomy and two counts of first-degree unlawful sexual penetration. He was lodged in jail on $5 million bail.